


we were victims of the night

by clairelutra (exosolarmoon)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Knows, Unresolved, Unresolved Romantic Tension, because adrien told her, gotta write that at some point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 10:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10332179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exosolarmoon/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: “Can… can I kiss you?” Chat said suddenly, hesitation and desire swirling in his expression. “Please?”Ladybug blinked. He hadn’t asked her that since… since…(And you just… keep asking her to kiss you! Over and over again!Marinette had ranted to Adrien on the phone once.What do you expect her to say? How can she take you seriously like that? You’ve gotta wait for the perfect moment.The perfect moment?Adrien had asked.You’ll know it, Marinette had assured him, pacing her room andperhapsthinking a little more about how to deal with the unexpected revelation of his identity than how he could best make Ladybug fall in love with him.Just… wait for it.And he had.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *adds this to my rapidly piling stack of wips*

“Mission accomplished!”

As soon as their knuckles bumped, both Ladybug and Chat Noir doubled over, gasping.

“We-we did it,” Ladybug panted, wiping her forehead and staring over the edge of the strut they were standing on. “I think.”

“Y-yeah,” Chat wheezed, collapsing in a pile of long limbs and rough grace. “We did.”

That akuma had been a _doozy_. And on Bastille Day, of all days. The longer she was a superhero, the more Ladybug wanted holidays and pensions, _especially_ when she ended up needing to explain to her family why she’d been missing from their traditional celebrations. 

She was _not_ looking forward to explaining why she hadn’t been at the parade. At all.

It was a pity she couldn’t just stay up here forever, she thought. Up here with Chat, side by side and facing the sky, no one but the two of them and whatever adventure they had in store for them next…

Ladybug thought… she thought that would be nice. To not have to go back.

Above them, the first of the fireworks went off with an ear-shattering _bang_.

Chat whistled, just barely audible over the ringing in her ears, and Ladybug looked up at the tail end of the explosion, at the glittering lights and trails of smoke.

It was thanks to the two of them that this could happen, that the city was still safe and the two of them (and their families and their loved ones and everyone else who lived here) could enjoy the fireworks.

Maybe that was worth it.

At a touch to her shoulder, Ladybug jumped.

“Everything okay?” Chat asked under the cover of the storm of crackling celebrations, and oh, she hadn’t realized he’d gotten up. “You’ve seemed kinda… lately.”

“Yeah! Just-just fine,” she yelped, defensive, and got a dubious, patient look for it.

 _I know you better than that_ , the look said.

She paused and looked away with a tiny sigh, because he was right. “I just… have a few things on my mind.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “If you need someone to talk to…”

“I know,” she murmured, slanting him a slight, grateful smile.

And the thing was, she did know. 

And if the person giving her the most grief wasn’t _him_ , she would have.

(Because, as it turned out, while having your crush come out to your civilian self as your superhero partner without knowing who you are was complicated enough on its own, falling fast and falling hard for the nerdy dork who texted you at three A.M. to gush about how awesome your alter ego was and anime at the _same time_ was even worse.)

(Especially when he still had no idea who you were. _Especially_ especially when just how comfortable you were starting to get with him slipped into how you acted with him in your other identity. Especially especially _especially_ when you kind of suspected that you’d long since passed the point at which you could’ve said something about the whole thing without being a major asshole.

Ladybug was resisting the temptation of telling him all of this _now_ purely on the basis of ‘I really want him to be happy and if I tell him, he won’t be happy anymore.’

Hence, her preoccupation.)

Chat eased off, letting go of her shoulder and moving back a respectful distance, and Ladybug was chasing his heat before she even realized she was cold.

It earned her an odd look when her shoulder bumped into his, but it cleared fast, replaced with understanding and followed by Chat carefully wrapping her in a side-hug.

That wasn’t what she’d intended, but his arm was heavy and warm and he smelled so _good_ and her stomach was tingling over being this close to him, so she’d take it.

The silence drifted on, enabled by the fact that she’d been forced to retransform mid-battle. They had all the time in the world tonight.

“Are… are there ever…”

Ladybug clamped her mouth shut in near horror as soon as she realized how that sentence was going to end, but Chat’s curiosity had already been piqued 

“Ever what?” he prodded, glancing down at her.

Ladybug found she couldn’t look at him. “Ever… ever times when you just wish…”

Chat waited.

“…That we didn’t have to go back?” she finished, and the sky erupted in colors once again.

“’Go back’?” he echoed, blinking.

Ladybug stared at the dying lights, still avoiding his eye. “To being civilians,” she clarified. “Just… be superheroes all the time, with no other identities to keep up.“

He looked up at the sky with her, just in time to catch a long row of golden glitter trails. 

“…Sometimes, yeah.” Then he grinned, dropping his arm so he could knock his shoulder against hers with a mischievous look. “But why, my lady, don’t tell me you _miss_ me when I’m not around.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes, not-quite grudging little smile on her lips. “Stoooop.”

(She _wished_ that was her problem.)

Chat did not stop. “And enough to spend the rest of your superhero life with me!” He clasped a hand over his heart and leaned in with a much sillier grin. “I’m touched!”

It took a very long time for Ladybug to remember that she was supposed to lean away.

By the time she did, his grin had gone tremulous around the corners, his eyes wide and soft, and then Ladybug was caught up in remembering why she wasn’t supposed to kiss him.

“…Well,” she finally said, mouth tingling in want. “If I had to spend it with anyone…” She met his eye, and her smile ached on her face. “…I’d be glad if it was you.”

His grin slipped off entirely, leaving a look so heart-wrenchingly _open_ that she couldn’t look away.

“Can… can I kiss you?” Chat said suddenly, hesitation and desire swirling in his expression. “Please?”

Ladybug blinked. He hadn’t asked her that since… since…

( _And you just… keep asking her to kiss you! Over and over again!_ Marinette had ranted to Adrien on the phone once. _What do you expect her to say? How can she take you seriously like that? You’ve gotta wait for the perfect moment._

 _The perfect moment?_ Adrien had asked.

 _You’ll know it_ , Marinette had assured him, pacing her room and _perhaps_ thinking a little more about how to deal with the unexpected revelation of his identity than how he could best make Ladybug fall in love with him. _Just… wait for it._

And he had.)

She swallowed.

Lying, lying, lying, she was _lying_ to him.

But oh, it would make him so _happy_.

And she wanted to kiss him, so _badly_ , wanted to taste him and sigh into his mouth and draw him into her and—

And she was lying to him.

“Depends,” she said, stalling for time.

“Depends?” he asked, looking much like he’d do just about anything to fit her requirements.

(It would make him so _happy_.)

Her eyes fell to his mouth, the perfect curve of his lower lip and the shapely bow of his upper, and wondered what it would feel like to slide each between her own in turn.

“On… on whether you’ll let me kiss you back,” said Ladybug’s craving mouth, her torn heart, her tingling body, and Chat’s pupils dilated in the light of a roman candle.

 _“Yes,”_ he breathed fervently, and that was _it_ — Ladybug tilted her head, and met him in the middle.

It felt like fireworks, like the explosions of glitterbright fire falling around them, like the crackle and pop of chemical reactions skittering under her skin. 

It felt like a breathless first taste of heaven, like musk and ambrosia. 

It felt like _worship_ , Chat’s trembling fingers running down her jaw and the clumsy stroking of his lips (unpracticed, she thought, was she his first kiss?) that made her blood rush all the harder.

She tangled her fingers in the short hairs just above his nape, and he opened to her on a groan — a groan that cut off in a shuddering gasp when she licked into his mouth, addicting herself to the taste of him in a second.

The kiss itself was thick, heavy, _achingly_ sweet — and deep and wet and _intense_ , for all it’s slow-rolling pace — and when she finally pulled away, she didn’t quite so much feel like she’d run a marathon so much as she felt like she’d come in contact with a heavy-hitting street drug.

 _“Ladybug,”_ he whispered, lips catching hers as she worked herself back, awed and _gutted_ , and Ladybug very nearly crashed right back into him.

 _More. more, more, more,_ begged every _single_ inch of her, from her rattling heart to her curling toes to the goosebumps on her scalp. _Please, oh god, again, again, just a little bit more—_

She was lying to him.

The thought was enough of a mental dousing to enable her to jerk away completely. 

“F-family!” she rasped, trying to stand a few times before her legs agreed to support her. “My family is p-probably… probably…”

He was staring up at her, eyes glazed and shining and so _adoring_ her pulse faltered.

(She’d made him _that happy_.)

“—l-looking for me…” she finished on an involuntary sigh, the words melting like cotton candy in her mouth.

He smiled, sluggish and even sweeter than the kiss, and she felt it right down to her _bones_. “Okay.”

She ripped her eyes away, nodding like a bobblehead, and unhooked her yo-yo from its holding before her legs could give out.

“Happy Bastille Day,” she called out, and then triple-checked her line before attempting to swing.

“Yeah,” he sighed at her retreating back, “Happy… happy Bastille day.”

(Ladybug didn’t even make it to the ground — she just hung in the shadows of one of the Eiffel Tower’s legs as she held a hand over her burning mouth and thought, _Oh no_.

Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh _no_.)


	2. Chapter 2

“Marinette! _Marinette!”_

The girl in question looked away from the clearing Bastille Day firework smoke, pensive little from melting into a soft smile at the sight of him.

Adrien didn’t even slow down, crashing into her and then picking her clear up off the ground and spinning her around, laughing.

Everything, everything, _everything_ was bright and warm and _wonderful_. His skin was buzzing, joy fizzing up in him like shaken champagne bottles just about ready to burst, and he couldn’t feel his legs. _Oh god, oh god, oh god—_

“I did it!” he yelled over the dying noise of the crowd, beaming up at her so hard his cheeks hurt, then he dropped his voice so the curious onlookers couldn’t hear his next words. The lack of volume didn’t make them any less intense to say.“I kissed her! She kissed me! I kissed _Ladybug!”_

He wanted to shout it to the whole wide world. He wanted to dance and dance and dance until he dropped, until the restless sparks rattling in his bones let him stop. He wanted to replay that scene over and over and over until it was tattooed on the walls of his heart, there to keep him warm forever. He almost, almost wanted to cry, just to release the overwhelming excess of _emotion_ in himself somehow.

Marinette laughed with him — or maybe at him; it didn’t matter — steadying herself on his shoulders and squeezing them gently. “Feeling lucky now, kitty?”

“I’m the luckiest cat in the _whole world_ ,” he breathed through the smile that he couldn’t control, setting her down so he could wrap his arms around her thighs and pick her up. He spun her around again, burying his burning, aching face in her collarbone with another unsteady laugh. “Oh Marinette, she’s so _amazing_.”

“Pffft,” was all Marinette said, burying her fingers in his hair and stroking tenderly, tiny little sparks adding to the lighthouse-bright glow that seemed to have suffused the very core of his being. “You don’t even know who she is.”

“Don’t caaare,” he groaned into the frills of her fancy blouse, biting his lip and getting distracted with the fact that he could still taste Ladybug on them and then promptly forgetting to breathe. “She kissed _me_.“

Marinette snorted again, but gentler this time. “Do I need to mark the day, chaton? On Bastille Day, 2018, Ladybug and Chat Noir had their first kiss?”

 _First_ kiss. 

First.

Adrien could die happy.

“Let’s make it a national holiday,” he mumbled, love drunk, his skin trying to fry itself off his face. 

“I… think we’ve already got that covered,” Marinette murmured into his hair, soft and amused. Then, with a little sigh: “Congratulations, kitty.”

Adrien was always grateful for the day he’d decided to make Marinette his secret keeper and advisor, but tonight he was more grateful than ever — grateful that she was at the festival and grateful she’d laughingly listen to all his effusive rambles and just… was _there_ for him the way he hoped he could be for her someday.

“Thanks, Marinette. For… for everything.”

It felt so lame, so insufficient for how much it meant to him, but she’d just laugh if he tried to encompass it, so he didn’t try.

She didn’t seem to mind, anyway. With only the faintest of hesitations, she said, “Of course, kitty. What are friends for?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you don't think marinette is screaming on the inside then you're wrong


End file.
